Passive Modernization? The New Human Development Index and Its Components in Italy’s Regions (1871-2007)

Emanuele Felice and Michelangelo Vasta

No 2012_10, UHE Working papers from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament d'Economia i Història Econòmica, Unitat d'Història Econòmica

Abstract: The article presents and discusses estimates of social and economic indicators for Italy’s regions in benchmark years roughly from Unification to the present day: life expectancy, education, Gdp per capita at purchasing power parity, and the new Human Development Index (HDI). A broad interpretative hypothesis, based on the distinction between passive and active modernization, is proposed to account for the evolution of regional imbalances over the long-run. In the lack of active modernization, Southern Italy converged thanks to passive modernization, i.e., State intervention: however, this was more effective in life expectancy, less successful in education, expensive and as a whole ineffective in Gdp. As a consequence, convergence in the HDI occurred from the late XIX century to the 1970s, but came to a sudden halt in the last decades of the XX century.

Keywords: Italy; regional growth; human development; Gdp; education; life expectancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N30 N33 N34 N90 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/worpap/2012/hdl_2072_213771/uhe2012_10.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Passive modernization? The new human development index and its components in Italy's regions (1871–2007) (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aub:uhewps:2012_10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UHE Working papers from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament d'Economia i Història Econòmica, Unitat d'Història Econòmica Edifici B, Campus UAB, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jesus Ramos-Martin ().